He often spoke of his enjoyment of life in advancing years. Somebody asked him one day what age he considered as the happiest. He replied with a smile, that he considered it to be about sixty.
During the illness, which, gradually wasting him away, ended his days, his inward life seemed to increase in fervour and strength. He inquired with the most cordial interest about the circumstances of those who came to visit him. Every human being seemed to have become more important and dearer to him, and yet all the while his brain kept ceaselessly labouring with great thoughts and objects.
“Can you help me,” said he to his friends during his last days, “to draw down my soul to every-day things from these crowds of images, these scenes of infinitude, this torrent of thought?”
Once, when some one was reading to him, he said, “Leave that; let me hear about people and their affairs!” He was often heard, during his last painless struggle, to say, “Heavenly Father!” His last words were, “I do not know when my heart was ever so overflowed with a grateful sense of the goodness of God!” And his last feeble whisper was, “I have received many messages from the Spirit!”
“As the day declined,” adds his biographer, “his countenance fell, he became weaker and weaker. With our aid he turned himself towards the window which looked out over the valleys and wooded heights to the east. We drew aside the curtains and the light fell on his face. The sun had just gone down, and the clouds and sky were brilliant with crimson and gold. He breathed more and more softly, and, without a sigh, the body fell asleep. We knew not when the spirit departed.”
Thus only can sink a sun-like human being; thus only can die a man whom God loves, and in whose heart His Spirit abides.
